Editor's Comment: Before you start connecting the dots, consider this: The attempt to discredit the elections and cause instability in Iran look very much like a scheme we've seen before - directly out of the CIA playbook. We've seen this pattern in so many elections in Venezuela, for example, I swear that even the Chavistas would be disappointed if it doesn't reappear next time around. After all, a little drama does add some excitement in elections where consistent landslide victories are won by presidents like Chavez and Ahmadinejad. So here we go again - the old Langley one, two, three:

Groom an opposition candidate to run against the guy you hate, pay him well and line up your media to back him.

During the campaign, sell him as the savior of the bourgeois opposition who lost their money in the revolution. Use your own pollsters and media propaganda to convince his followers that they are going to win by a wide margin.

When your guy loses, scream "FRAUD!" It's akin to yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre, inflaming all those disappointed bourgeois counter-revolutionaries. Get them out on the street, setting fires, playing the victim, waving flags, ready-to-go placards, banners, women crying in front of CNN cameras and men yelling angrily into Christiana Amanpour's microphone. Only this time, they're ready to burn their own flag instead of the U.S. flag. I tell ya, it makes great TV for a western audience. (Incidentally, don't take Christiana's reports too seriously. The Amanpours, like many Iranian expats, led a privileged life under the Shah of Iran and lost their ill gotten wealth as a result of the Iranian revolution in '79. Naturally, Christiana was very upset. Later, she married James Rubin, an arch-Zionist, and regained her status, good money and even some fame, this time as a CNN reporter in service to the empire.)

Mir Hussein Mousavi followed his script, declared to his followers that the election was invalid instead of graciously accepting defeat. CIA's shill, Manuel Rosales, did exactly the same thing in Venezuela when he lost large to President Chavez in 2006. The opposition came out and banged their pots and pans, then went home to bed. When Ahmadinejad reached out to Mousavi and his followers, offering to give them a part in the new government, Mousavi rejected the offer. Folks, these are not exactly marks of a real statesman, ready to lead a nation.

Yes, they'll succeed in smearing Iran and marring this election in the minds of those who prejudged them before they took place. The CIA/Mossad duo can be proud of the pain and confusion they've caused in Iran and worldwide. Now they've got some video of some angry Iranians to show their bosses for a pat on the head. But if they think that they can destabilise Iran by getting a few thousand Iranians out on the streets of Teheran, they're even dumber than I thought.

Manucher Ghorbanifar

Mir Hussein Mousavi

Indeed, connect the dots below, get acquanted with Manucher Ghorbanifar and find out a little more about Hussein Mousavi, the U.S.-backed candidate before you buy the western media line about fraud in the 2009 Iranian election.

- Les Blough, Editor

June 14, 2009
Some Dots You May Want To Connect
Moon of Alabama Editorial

...In any ordinary business, Manucher Ghorbanifar would cut an implausibly mysterious figure. Officially, he has been a shipping executive in Tehran and a commodities trader in France. By his own account he was a refugee from the revolutionary government of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, which confiscated his businesses in Iran, yet he later became a trusted friend and kitchen adviser to Mir Hussein Mousavi, Prime Minister in the Khomeini government. Some U.S. officials who have dealt with Ghorbanifar praise him highly. Says Michael Ledeen**, adviser to the Pentagon on counterterrorism: "He is one of the most honest, educated, honorable men I have ever known." Others call him a liar who, as one puts it, could not tell the truth about the clothes he is wearing. The Murky World of Weapons Dealers, Time Magazine, Jan. 19, 1987

...On or about November 25, 1985, Ledeen received a frantic phone call from Ghorbanifar, asking him to relay a message from the prime minister of Iran to President Reagan regarding the shipment of the wrong type of HAWKs. United States v. Robert C. McFarlane, Walsh Iran Contra Report, 1985

...Franklin, along with another colleague from Feith's office, a polyglot Middle East expert named Harold Rhode, were the two officials involved in the back-channel, which involved on-going meetings and contacts with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and other Iranian exiles, dissidents and government officials.

...The administration's reluctance to disclose these details seems clear: the DoD-Ghorbanifar meetings suggest the possibility that a rogue faction at the Pentagon was trying to work outside normal US foreign policy channels to advance a "regime change" agenda not approved by the president's foreign policy principals or even the president himself. Iran-Contra II?, Washington Monthly, September 2004

...Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.

...“The Finding was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.” Preparing the Battlefield, The New Yorker, July 7, 2008

...The Ukrainian Orange phenomenon was modeled quite explicitly on the example of the Rose Revolution, which featured a disputed election, massive youth-oriented street protests, and plenty of subsidies from U.S. government agencies. The 'Color' Revolutions: Fade to Black, Antiwar, September 29, 2006.

...The Pentagon and US intelligence have refined the art of such soft coups to a fine level. RAND planners call it ‘swarming,’ referring to the swarms of youth, typically linked by SMS and web blogs, who can be mobilized on command to destabilize a target regime. Color Revolutions, Geopolitics and the Baku Pipeline", Engdahl, (no date)

...Even before the count began, Mousavi declared himself “definitely the winner” based on “all indications from all over Iran.” He accused the government of “manipulating the people’s vote” to keep Ahmadinejad in power and suggested the reformist camp would stand up to challenge the results.

There is a full effort of the "western" media and some expatriate Iranian organizations to de-legitimize the Iranian election despite the absence of any real evidence of voting fraud. These events show all characteristics of an engineered "color evolution".

As said before I find the reelection of Ahmadinejad quite plausible. He has done a lot for the poor and the elections were for a decent part class based. As Robert Fisk relates from someone not-regime-friendly in Tehran:

But I must repeat what he said. "The election figures are correct, Robert. Whatever you saw in Tehran, in the cities and in thousands of towns outside, they voted overwhelmingly for Ahmadinejad. Tabriz voted 80 per cent for Ahmadinejad. It was he who opened university courses there for the Azeri people to learn and win degrees in Azeri. In Mashad, the second city of Iran, there was a huge majority for Ahmadinejad after the imam of the great mosque attacked Rafsanjani of the Expediency Council who had started to ally himself with Mousavi. They knew what that meant: they had to vote for Ahmadinejad."

My guest and I drank dookh, the cool Iranian drinking yoghurt so popular here. The streets of Tehran were a thousand miles away. "You know why so many poorer women voted for Ahmadinejad? There are three million of them who make carpets in their homes. They had no insurance. When Ahmadinejad realised this, he immediately brought in a law to give them full insurance. Ahmadinejad's supporters were very shrewd. They got the people out in huge numbers to vote – and then presented this into their vote for Ahmadinejad."

The myth in the "western" media is that Ahmadinejad is a "right-wing hardliner". While he asserts nationalism and sovereignty as any president should do, in interior politics and economics, dominant in elections everywhere, his position is more to the left of the typical "western" right-left scale.

The argument favored by Juan Cole and others that high inflation and high unemployment numbers should have favored Mousavi and the 'reformers' backed by Iran's richest man Rafsanjani. But those numbers, as asserted in the "west", arenot what they are said to be.

Unfortunately the myth that is currently created, will likely be used to favor the agenda of the war mongers. We will all be in trouble if their argument wins. This whole issue will do wonders for oil speculators and thereby snuff up any "green shots".

**Michael A. Ledeen
Michael Ledeen holds the Freedom Chair and is resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington. He is also on the board of advisors of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). Ledeen is a particularly hawkish neo-conservative, with a lot of influence among policymakers. He lectures on war and peace, terrorism, the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. He is an advisor to Bush advisor and to presidential campaign mastermind Karl Rove.

In 1981-86, Ledeen was a special advisor and consultant to top policy officials in the Reagan administration, including the Secretary of State, National Security Advisor and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Ledeen was deeply involved in the Iran-Contra affair while a consultant to National Security Advisor Robert C. McFarlane, and there was much controversy over the intricate details of Ledeen's role including his involvement with various Israeli figures and with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. He gave his version of the affair in the book Perilous Statecraft: An Insiders Account of the Iran-Contra Affair.

Ledeen's biographical notes, posted on the AEI website and elsewhere, boast that he is one of the world's leading authorities on intelligence, contemporary history and international affairs, and that "in a few years in government he carried out some of the most sensitive and dangerous missions in recent American history." They quote a profile as saying "this is a man who has helped shape American foreign policy at its highest levels�as Ted Koppel puts it, 'Michael Ledeen is a Renaissance man� in the tradition of Machiavelli."

Ledeen is the author of 15 books, among them The War Against the Terror Masters (published in 2002, highly-praised by Bernard Lewis); Tocqueville on American Character; Machiavelli of Modern Leadership, and Freedom Betrayed: How American Led a Global Democratic Revolution, Won the Cold War and Walked Away.

Ledeen writes for the Wall Street Journal, The International Economy, the American Spectator, the New York Sun and National Review and so on. (In addition to promulgating his ultra-hawkish views, he writes about contract bridge for the Wall Street Journal and New York Sun).

Following the military campaign in Iraq, Ledeen has been urging that the U.S. take on Iran and Syria, in terms that are worry some observers. He dubs Iran "the mother of modern terrorism," and told JINSA on April 30, 2003 that now is the time for Iranian "liberation." He also said it is "clear that Saudi Arabia is the main financier of terrorism, and that mosques and schools built by the Saudis continue to preach the Wahhabi doctrine of global Jihad (holy war) against non-believers and urging that arms be taken up against the U.S., Israel and their allies."

Ledeen said the Middle East is on the verge of drastic change, and concluded by saying, "the time for diplomacy is at an end; it is time for a free Iran, free Syria and free Lebanon."

According to Ledeen, the process by which this should be achieved is a violent one, termed "total war." "Total war not only destroyed the enemy's military forces, but also brings the enemy society to an extremely personal point of decision, so that they are willing to accept a reversal of the cultural trends," Ledeen writes. "The sparing of civilians lives cannot be the total war's first priority� The purpose of total war is to permanently force your will onto another people."

He wrote an article in March 2003 in the New York Post about "The story of Iran's mad dash to develop nuclear weapons." He claimed that "the relationship between Iran and North Korea is still under appreciated," and that "the mullahs are determined to obliterate Israel." He suggested that Iran could be like a state suicide bomber, attacking Israel with nuclear weapons even if it knows that Israel would retaliate and wipe Iran off the map. "Why are we doing nothing to support the Iranian people's efforts to rid themselves of their monstrous regime?" He criticized Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage for saying that Iran is a democracy. "Why are we making deals with Iranian-sponsored Shiites regarding the future of Iraq?" Ledeen asked. "Will we finally move against all the components of the "Axis of Evil," or must we wait until President Bush's analysis is confirmed by a new act of horror?"

In an April 14, 2003 article in The Australian he called for regime change in Syria and Iran. "No one I know wants to wage war on Iran and Syria, but there is now a clear recognition that we must defend ourselves against them. They are an integral part of the terror network that produced 11 September. Left undisturbed, they will kill us in Iraq and Afghanistan and mount new attacks on our homelands." He said unlike Iraq there is no need for a military campaign. "Our most potent weapons are the peoples of Syria and Iran and they are primed, loaded and ready to fire. We should now pull the political lanyards and unleash democratic revolution on the terror masters in Damascus and Tehran."

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